The Rehearsal: A Season-by-Season Guide to Nathan Fielder’s HBO Experiment

The Rehearsal is an HBO series created, directed by and starring Nathan Fielder, in which real people rehearse the hardest moments of their lives in advance, inside enormous replica sets with hired actors standing in for the people they’re dreading. Season one (2022) began with a man confessing a lie to his trivia partner and ended somewhere much stranger. Season two (2025) set out to fix how airline pilots talk to each other and ended with Fielder at the controls of a Boeing 737.

This page is a guide to the show itself: how it works, each season episode by episode, what the endings mean and where things stand with season three. For Fielder’s whole career, from Nathan For You to The Curse and his 2026 documentary, read our Nathan Fielder profile.

How the show works

The premise sounds like a self-help product. Someone is anxious about a conversation. Fielder’s team builds the place it will happen at full scale, down to the fixtures; casts actors to play the people involved, often after secretly researching them; and maps every turn the conversation could take on a giant flowchart. The subject then rehearses, again and again, until nothing can surprise them.

The comedy comes first from the absurd disproportion: huge resources thrown at small human problems. The deeper subject arrives later. The more Fielder tries to control every variable, the clearer it becomes that control is the thing he wants for himself, and that the process changes the people inside it in ways no flowchart can predict.

Season 1 (2022), episode by episode

The first season aired weekly on HBO from July 15 to August 19, 2022.

1. Ep. 1

   “Orange Juice, No Pulp”

   Kor Skeete, a Brooklyn trivia regular, has told his teammate he has a master’s degree he doesn’t have, and wants to come clean. Fielder builds a full replica of the bar, the Alligator Lounge, and hires an actor to play the teammate. It works, in a way. It is also funny, unsettling and, as it turns out, just a trial run for the show’s real story.

2. Ep. 2

   “Scion”

   Angela, a woman in her forties, wants to know if she is ready to be a mother. Fielder sets her up in a farmhouse in rural Oregon with a “son” played by a rotating cast of child actors (swapped frequently because of child labour rules) and a robotic baby at night. The rehearsal will compress years of childhood into weeks.

3. Ep. 3

   “Gold Digger”

   Fielder ages the rehearsal child faster. A side story follows Patrick, who wants to confront his brother about an inheritance, until he walks away from the production. It is the first clear sign that the method can fail.

4. Ep. 4

   “The Fielder Method”

   Fielder opens an acting class teaching actors to shadow real people in order to play them. Then he turns the technique on himself. Meanwhile, the Oregon rehearsal stages a teenage drug storyline for the “son.”

5. Ep. 5

   “Apocalypto”

   Fielder, who is Jewish, and Angela, who is a devout Christian, clash over how their rehearsal child should be raised. Angela leaves the project. Fielder carries on alone.

6. Ep. 6

   “Pretend Daddy”

   Remy, one of the child actors, has become attached to Fielder and treats him as a father. Fielder starts to worry about what the show has done to a real child, and the finale folds the method back on itself, with Fielder rehearsing the role of Remy’s mother. It ends unresolved and uncomfortable, and it is the most discussed episode the show has produced.

Season 2 (2025), episode by episode

Three years later, season two aired on HBO from April 20 to May 25, 2025. It drops individual clients and takes on a single public problem: aviation safety. Drawing on cockpit transcripts from crashes and a suggestion from a former NTSB member, Fielder argues that many accidents come from poor communication between captain and first officer, and that pilots could rehearse speaking up.

1. Ep. 1

   “Gotta Have Fun”

   Fielder lays out the thesis, studies pilot-error crashes, and builds a partial replica of Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport to begin rehearsals with first officers.

2. Ep. 2

   “Star Potential”

   To test how co-pilots handle telling people bad news, Fielder stages Wings of Voice, a fake televised singing contest judged by pilots. It draws on a job Fielder once had working on Canadian Idol.

3. Ep. 3

   “Pilot’s Code”

   Fielder rehearses the entire life of Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot of the 2009 Hudson River landing, from infancy onward, using outsized sets, puppets and actors. The episode earned Emmy nominations for directing and writing.

4. Ep. 4

   “Kissme”

   A detour into one first officer’s love life, as Fielder tries to coach his dating confidence, ending with a kiss on the cheek. It is the season at its most tender.

5. Ep. 5

   “Washington”

   Fielder prepares to take his findings to Congress, rehearsing testimony for an aviation subcommittee, and meets Representative Steve Cohen, who is not persuaded and suggests airlines decide on such training themselves.

6. Ep. 6

   “My Controls”

   The finale reveals that Fielder has spent about two years training as a pilot. He qualifies to fly a 737 and flies one with a full cabin of actors, with his first officer drawn from the Wings of Voice judges.

What the season 2 ending means

Season two gives Fielder something his whole career has been building toward: a situation he can’t rehearse his way out of. After a season of building sets so that other people could practise, he puts himself in a real cockpit where the stakes cannot be faked. Many critics read the flight as an answer to season one’s ethical questions. This time the person taking the risk is Fielder himself.

It is also an argument made with a straight face. The aviation-safety thesis may be partly a pretext, but Fielder pursues it far enough that it stops being just a joke, and the show is careful not to say whether he succeeded. Lawmakers weren’t moved. He still flew the plane.

The ethics debate

The Rehearsal has always attracted criticism alongside praise. The sharpest objections centre on what the show does to people who aren’t in on the full joke: Angela, whose faith and private ambitions become material, and the child actors, especially Remy. Even the first episode’s happy ending is complicated by how much was arranged behind Kor’s back. In The New Yorker, Richard Brody argued that the show’s cruel, controlling gaze overwhelmed its strengths, though he warmed to parts of season two.

The show’s defenders point out that it puts those worries on screen. Fielder frets about consent, second-guesses himself and lets episodes end on his own doubt. Whether that self-awareness resolves the problem or just makes it more palatable is the argument at the heart of the series, and part of why it belongs in any serious conversation about comedy and ethics.

Reception and awards

Season one topped several 2022 year-end lists and won the Independent Spirit Award for best new non-scripted or documentary series. Season two was generally received as more ambitious and more playful; Fielder earned 2025 Primetime Emmy nominations for directing and writing for “Pilot’s Code.” Both seasons sit alongside work like Jerrod Carmichael’s self-exposing specials as key texts of alt comedy in the 2020s, where the line between performance and real life became the main event.

Will there be a season 3?

As of October 2026, HBO has not officially renewed The Rehearsal. Season two was greenlit quickly in 2022, but the gap between seasons was nearly three years. In 2025, HBO chief Casey Bloys said Fielder had an idea he was working on, and reports through 2026 described him as still developing a third season. Meanwhile, Fielder’s 2026 project was a feature documentary, covered in our Nathan Fielder profile.

Where to watch The Rehearsal

Both seasons stream on HBO Max wherever the service is available, as of 2026. In other countries, HBO series are often licensed to local partners, so check your region.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Rehearsal about?

Nathan Fielder helps real people prepare for difficult moments by rehearsing them in advance, using full-size replica sets, hired actors and branching scripts that try to anticipate every possible response. Over time the show turns its method on Fielder himself and on the ethics of what he is doing.

What did The Rehearsal set out to do, and what did it actually achieve?

Season one set out to help a man confess a lie and a woman test-drive motherhood; it ended up as a study of control, performance and the effect of the production on its participants, including a child actor. Season two set out to improve airline safety by rehearsing how co-pilots speak up; it ended with Fielder earning a commercial pilot’s licence and flying a Boeing 737 himself, without convincing lawmakers to change anything.

Is there a season 3 of The Rehearsal?

As of October 2026 HBO had not officially announced one. HBO chief Casey Bloys said in 2025 that Fielder had an idea he was developing, and reports in 2026 said he was still working on it.

Is The Rehearsal real or scripted?

The participants are real people with real goals, and the sets and actors are genuinely built and hired. But it is a heavily constructed and edited show, and Fielder narrates and shapes events. It sits somewhere between documentary, reality TV and comedy, which is a big part of what people argue about.

Did Nathan Fielder really fly a plane in The Rehearsal?

Yes. Season two reveals that Fielder trained for about two years and qualified to fly a Boeing 737. In the finale he flies one, with a cabin full of actors rather than paying passengers.